Patrick's Group

Patrick is 26 years old, has 3 children, and he lives in Sieguti village in Muhudu, Kenya. Sieguti village does not have a piped water supply, so the community collects their water from an unprotected spring. This water is easily contaminated with bacteria that can cause diarrhea and other water-borne diseases, meaning that Patrick and his family may fall sick and become unable to work or attend school.

Patrick works as a subsistence/peasant farmer, but has also volunteered his time to be the promoter for a new chlorine dispenser program that enables his community to drink safe water and stay healthy. Patrick and other promoters in his community (including: Francis, Jane, Emesi and Emily) need a loan to cover the costs of installing and maintaining chlorine dispensers at the water sources in the area. Patrick will encourage the community to treat their water with the dispenser, and refill the dispenser with chlorine as needed. Patrick wants to be a promoter because he wants to enlighten the community on the importance of treating water. Patrick believes that the dispenser will make water safe, thus preventing diseases and giving people good health.

The Kiva loan will be repaid by Evidence Action (www.evidenceaction.org) on behalf of the community, through the sale of carbon credits. Using the chlorine dispenser generates carbon credits by avoiding the need to boil water to make it safe to drink. The sale of carbon credits, to organizations and individuals wanting to reduce their carbon footprint, will be used to repay Kiva lenders and also to make sure that Patrick’s community can have access to safe water now and in the future.

Additional Information

About Evidence Action

This loan is part of Evidence Action’s Dispensers for Safe Water program, providing rural communities with access to safe drinking water by installing chlorine dispensers where people collect water. The dispensers enable community members to treat their water with chlorine to make it safe to drink.

Kiva loans are used to finance the installation, maintenance and refilling of chlorine dispensers. Evidence Action provides dispensers as in-kind loans to communities, represented on Kiva by dispenser “promoters,” who will help educate their neighbors about the equipment’s use and benefits, and refill the dispenser with chlorine.

Instead of these loans being repaid by community members, Kiva lenders are reimbursed by the sale of carbon credits. These carbon credits are generated when households use chlorine dispensers to treat their water, because they no longer have to boil it over wood-burning fires that release harmful greenhouse gases. This change in behavior is monetized through the sale of carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market.

Here’s how it works:

1) Kiva borrowers grant the rights to carbon credits they generate to Evidence Action.
2) Evidence Action works with an organization called Impact Carbon to monitor, quantify and verify carbon credits, which can then be sold to individuals and organizations looking to reduce their carbon footprint.
3) Revenue earned from this sale is used to maintain dispensers and repay Kiva lenders.

This is the first time Kiva is financing loans that are repaid with carbon credit revenues. By supporting this loan, you’re joining an exciting experiment in using credit to fund carbon-reducing water projects. This also means that these loans may carry a significantly higher level of risk than typical Kiva loans.

This Kiva loan will be used to provide borrowers with needed goods or services, as opposed to cash or financial credit.

This is a Group Loan

In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.

Kiva's Field Partners typically feature one borrower from a group. The loan description, sector, and other attributes for a group loan profile are determined by the featured borrower's loan. The other members of the group are not required to use their loans for the same purpose.